Objective

To survey the present condition of community pharmacies as future sites for pharmacy students'externship in Japan.

Method

A questionnaire consisting of 55 questions was sent to 425 graduates from Kobe Gakuin University, School of Pharmacy, who owned or worked in community pharmacies.

Results

Of the 85 responders, about half were owners and half employees of pharmacies.

Ninety per cent of pharmacy owners operated three and fewer pharmacies.

Fifty per cent of pharmacies only dispensed drugs, 32% handled both OTC drugs and dispensing, and 18% handled only OTC drugs.

Among the 44 dispensing pharmacies, 16 were one-to-one type pharmacies, 13 were located in front of the big medical institutions, nine dispensed prescriptions from various medical institutions and five were hospital-owned pharmacies.

Thirty-one per cent of prescriptions came from internal medicine departments and the daily number of prescriptions dispensed by each pharmacy was in the range 10-99 for 41% of the pharmacies and 100-199 for 36% of the pharmacies.

The average daily number of prescriptions dispersed by each pharmacist was in the range 30-39 for 29% of pharmacies and in the range 20-29 for 22% of pharmacies.

Pharmaceutical information was provided at 73% of pharmacies and patients were counselled orally on their medication at 80% of pharmacies. (...)